El Maestro de los Tiplistas (Master of the Tiple Players)
Our heroes have returned, seemingly triumphant in their effort to put Gran Colombian history back on its true path (see Abuelita Rosa (Grandma Rosa) and Aventuras en el Pasado (Adventures in the Past)); however, unbeknownst to our heroes, upon their return to the present there are entirely too many people with memories of the old timeline *and* the new timeline. One such person is Claudio Holguín, (previously) known throughout Gran Colombia - and especially in his native Bogotá - as El Maestro de los Tiplistas! His knowledge of both timelines makes him insufferably angry. Before the alterations, he was the most famous tiple player in all of Gran Colombia; now that the timeline's been altered, however, he's lucky to be known in Bogotá and to have played for the Gran Colombian Army! He vows revenge on El Presidente and sets off with his 12 epically muscular (and Fuego Azul - infused) esbirros (henchmen/minions) on an epic week-long ride in a carriage drawn by super-fast Fuego Azul - blessed horses! A week later, our heroes (and Dr. Mantis) are taking in Tenochtitlán Town Square, when suddenly they're approached by the very humble-looking Holguín, who offers to play his tiple for the great Gran Colombian heroes after his week-long journey to see them! Flattered by this attention, our heroes agree to listen to his beautiful music. Little do they suspect that his tiple playing is about to sway their minds to reveal El Presidente Juárez's location - all except for Dr. Mantis, who knows that Holguín is up to general no good. Unfortunately this knowledge does no good, because El Tigre Azul (under the influence of the tiple-induced mind-control, no less) tells Holguín exactly where in the Federal Building to find El Presidente Juárez! Hearing this, Holguín's 12 esbirros grab hold of all our heroes (and Dr. Mantis, who has two on him specifically) and teleport them, along with Holguín, into El Presidente's office. El Presidente is of course shocked and tries to escape, but despite his attempts the esbirros successfully pin him to one corner of his office. Meanwhile, El Enigma manages to break free of the siren song coming forth from the tiple and manages to damage it but not destroy it. She also steps back, lazily dodging a sloppy stab attempt from one of the esbirros, mocking him with, “You call that bladework? Sloppy!” After two other esbirros fail to stab her, she mocks them with, “You’re beginning to bore me now!” La Bruja then breaks free of the tiple’s spell and uses her power of singing to call forth a cyclone, knocking the tiple ''out of El Maestro’s hands and sending it whirring about before it crashes against the wall and into a million pieces! In order to help their Maestro maintain his influence over the heroes, three ''esbirros create a portal to El Maestro’s hacienda in Bogotá; whilst they are doing this, Dr. Mantis fascinates at least two of the esbirros, deceiving them into thinking that he is their beloved Maestro. One esbirro doesn’t believe him and carries on bringing the real Maestro a new tiple to play. Whilst Dr. Mantis is having fun pretending to be El Maestro, El Tigre Azul is having a little less fun, and so are La Bruja and Señor Blanco. El Tigre Azul is punched in the gut with brass knuckles by one of the esbirros after having dodged the other’s brass-knuckly punch. At the same time, La Bruja gets stabbed in the side by an esbirro after having dodged the other’s stab; she then retorts, “Normally you buy a girl a drink first!” While this is going on, Señor Blanco gets a punch to the ribs that makes him crouch down in exquisite agony worthy of the loudest “¡Uy!” El Tigre Azul has had enough, and so have the other heroes! El Tigre Azul shouts, “Get the tiple!” El Maestro retorts, “El tiple is not meant for El Tigre!” and proceeds to get La Bruja back under the tiple’s spell, ordering her to “Get El Tigre out of the way!” After she responds, “OK,” Señor Blanco levitates the tiple and cracks it against the wall! When it comes El Enigma’s turn, she shouts, “You should know the price for strumming treason!” and proceeds to slice El Maestro’s hand… …but then something truly bizarre occurs. One esbirro teleports to a secret chamber inside El Maestro’s house and brings back El Maestro’s personal Fuego Azul – blessed medicine man, El Médico. Another esbirro pummels El Enigma, grunting primitively, “No uy, but hurt.” Seeing the threat El Médico poses to taking down El Maestro, La Bruja takes action! She creates sparks, which explode in such a way that El Médico jumps in the air and falls back down to the ground startled and in no position to heal for the moment. Meanwhile, back in Bogotá, Dr. Maestro is having a whale of a time! One of the spellbound esbirros asks Dr. Maestro, “Do you want a tiple, patron?” Dr. Maestro nods, and the esbirro brings him another tiple from the vast collection. As Dr. Maestro tries to play, he finds that he’s striking more dischord than chords, which prompts the other esbirro to ask, “Patrón, are you stressed?” Dr. Maestro dons an irritated face as if to confirm the esbirro’s suspicions and curtly barks, “Take the tiples away!” The suspicious esbirro rounds on Dr. Maestro and attempts to expose him for not being the real Maestro, to which Dr. Maestro responds with a healthy bashing of a tiple on his esbirro head and barks at the other two, “Deal with this man!” One of the two loyal esbirros says, “There is a special fate awaiting you! You do NOT doubt the patron!” They then take the more perceptive esbirro and throw him off a high hilltop for Dr. Maestro to see. Dr. Maestro then gets to his planned looting and finds 5 tiples untouched, in addition to 12 bottles of a special kind of aguardiente (Latin American moonshine) called Aguardiente Reserva 1820 (very sought after in Gran Colombia). After looting all of this stuff (using part of his own morphed body as a makeshift rucksack), he uses a bottle of aguardiente to bribe a local farmer riding in a covered wagon drawn by Fuego Azul – blessed horses to take him to Tenochtitlán. Back in the Federal Building in Tenochtitlán, El Tigre Azul has his hands full! He dodges one esbirro’s knife and backflips away from the other esbirro, causing them both to klunk into each other in a comical fashion! He then executes a masterful flying leap and lands on top of El Maestro when he attempts to use his tiple again to seduce the heroes into doing his bidding; in fact, when El Maestro tries to play his tiple, nothing happens. Señor Blanco is so sick of that wretched tiple he could scream!!! He catapults it out of El Maestro’s hand, spins it, and then mightily slams it into the wall in such a way that the strings float and fall to the ground like paper! Meanwhile, La Bruja and El Enigma have had enough of these wretched esbirros! La Bruja puts three of them in her famous cyclone, and they become paralysed although they manage to teleport out, much to everyone’s surprise; she also causes another esbirro to sneeze continuously. El Enigma then rhetorically asks two of the remaining esbirros, “You want to do the dance, then?” as she expertly slices their Achilles’ heels, causing them to cry out in exquisite “¡Uy!”-worthy pain! The esbirros have also had enough of the heroes’ meddling! One of them punches at La Bruja, who because of her previous stab wound lets out a pained “¡Ay!” On the way out of Bogotá three gauchos (Argentinian cowboys) attempt to rob Dr. Maestro and the farmer; unfortunately for them, Dr. Maestro is more powerful than they know! He morphs into a swarm of bees, thus scaring the gauchos and intimidating two of them into leaving their own possessions behind as they flee! He manages to loot 3 rifles, 200 Gran Colombian Pesos, 10 ounces of silver, 10 ounces of gold, and 3 bottles of Aguardiente Reserva 1855, one of which is glowing with the Fuego Azul! He forces the remaining gaucho bandit to drink 1/8th of the enchanted aguardiente, which causes him to turn into a muscular esbirro in his own right! Back in the Federal Building in Tenochtitlán, El Maestro’s tiples don’t seem to be going away, which provides no end of annoyance for our heroes! El Maestro is brought yet another tiple, at which point El Tigre Azul clotheslines him, declaring, “I am a lover of the arts, but I am also a lover of justice!” Señor Blanco then rolls under El Tigre Azul and karate-chops El Maestro’s latest tiple, which then flies up, lands, and breaks apart! Meanwhile, La Bruja floats under the silhouette of El Maestro and thunderbolt-strikes his neck with her amazing magic! Realising he cannot win against such a force arrayed against him, El Maestro yells out, “Meddling grancolombianos!” Señor Blanco retorts, “WE are the TRUE grancolombianos here!” Seeing that El Médico is frightened into obeisance, El Enigma approaches him as a potential ally, with her angelic powers at maximum. She declares, “It isn’t looking too good for your team, old man!” He agrees, and she offers to pay him handsomely for his medical skills, falsely declaring, “We have all the gold of the Aztecs!” Even despite this blatant lie, he agrees to help, having seen the team’s awesome power in action. Also, now that he’s out of danger, El Presidente agrees to pay his heroes 300 Gran Colombian Pesos (a small fortune in that era) per year per person for their services, which they gladly accept! The universal language of dinero has spoken! Meanwhile, the second-to-last remaining esbirro in the Federal Building teleports El Maestro back to Bogotá to try to make a clean escape (at which point Señor Blanco angrily shouts, “El Tigre, I said to grab him!”); however, El Presidente and the heroes are hot on their trail, tracking them down to El Maestro’s hacienda. No sooner does El Presidente say to El Maestro, "Don't play tiple with our feelings!" than the esbirro shoots El Maestro with a rifle and then attempts to shoot himself; however, before he can shoot himself the heroes take his rifle away, at which point he teleports away. On an interesting side note, the sneezy esbirro manages to sneeze himself into a heart attack, and he dies where he stands. Meanwhile, in New London, the last remaining esbirro – whose name is revealed to be Juan Juanez – appears before Queen Victoria of British America, offering to provide her with vital information which will help her to undermine Gran Colombia’s territorial gains, and her very existence. Intrigued, she listens to the muscular stranger…